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A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

nytimes.com

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Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#31

Post by mullen »

steveeq1 wrote: post #22

Ok, I am somewhat ignorant about how the drug system works in america, but theoretically, can one buy the drug where it's cheaper (say, India) via the darknet markets like silkroad or whatever and have it shipped to the US?

Yes, but there are two problems:

1) You can't guarantee they are real. The upside of buying drugs in the US is that if you get fake pills, it is a huge deal and people get sued out of business for this. Rite Aid (A national drugstore chain) got caught shorting the pill count in prescriptions and they got into big trouble.

2) The Department of Homeland Security will open packages from companies that they suspect are selling medicines from abroad and shipping to the US and impound the pills. The odds are good that you won't get caught, but if you do, it can become a real hassle.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#33

Post by toomuchtodo »

ikeboy wrote: post #18
gdrulia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying makes perfect sense on paper, but unfortunately reality is as always slightly more complex. Such simple thinking is full of the holes for exploitation and there will always be someone who will exploit them. Medicine is especially sensitive, because medicine can be priceless in value for the human who needs it, but that same human might not be able to pay that much. You can introduce government help…

The question is how we can fix this systematically without making bigger problems. Should a government agency set prices? What if the company stops making the drug, then? The price is high because no other companies are willing to make it for lower, after all. Note that the drug in question is not under patent. I don't think you'd advocate for literally forcing the company to make it and sell it for a specific price.…

> Should a government agency set prices?

Yes.

> What if the company stops making the drug, then?

A non-profit government sponsored entity manufactures the drug at cost.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#34

Post by larrys »

ikeboy wrote: post #15
larrys wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feature request: Along those lines, I was trying to find an article (using algolia) which discussed different names for AWS service names confusion and it was useless for that purpose (given search terms I tried). Since I always clear my browser history I couldn't see the links that I had visited. A nice feature would be if there was a way to note which article links I clicked on or which comment threads I have visit…

You can see which ones you've upvoted at https://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=larrys (only works for you).

Thanks for that. But for some reason both that and the save comments seems incomplete. Hard to believe those are all of the stories I upvoted I upvote everything I read typically and upvote (from memory) more comments then "saved comments" indicates. Also "saved" should be "upvoted".

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#35

Post by pixl97 »

ikeboy wrote: post #18
gdrulia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying makes perfect sense on paper, but unfortunately reality is as always slightly more complex. Such simple thinking is full of the holes for exploitation and there will always be someone who will exploit them. Medicine is especially sensitive, because medicine can be priceless in value for the human who needs it, but that same human might not be able to pay that much. You can introduce government help…

The question is how we can fix this systematically without making bigger problems. Should a government agency set prices? What if the company stops making the drug, then? The price is high because no other companies are willing to make it for lower, after all. Note that the drug in question is not under patent. I don't think you'd advocate for literally forcing the company to make it and sell it for a specific price.…

>What if the company stops making the drug, then? The price is high because no other companies are willing to make it for lower, after all.

Nope, don't force the company to make it. Force the company to give the formulation to another company that will. This article states the reason it is able to be priced so high, at least for a time, is that other companies will have to reverse engineer it and get a line running. Take out the time of getting the product formulated right and the original holder has to think about the ramifications of any shenanigans they will attempt to pull.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

mullen wrote: post #31
steveeq1 wrote: post #22

Ok, I am somewhat ignorant about how the drug system works in america, but theoretically, can one buy the drug where it's cheaper (say, India) via the darknet markets like silkroad or whatever and have it shipped to the US?

Yes, but there are two problems: 1) You can't guarantee they are real. The upside of buying drugs in the US is that if you get fake pills, it is a huge deal and people get sued out of business for this. Rite Aid (A national drugstore chain) got caught shorting the pill count in prescriptions and they got into big trouble. 2) The Department of Homeland Security will open packages from companies that they suspect are s…

Neither are a problem. Typically, you don't get repeat business if you're selling fake pills, so online sellers of prescription drugs almost always provide you with what you're buying. This applies to both prescription drugs as well as recreational drugs purchased through darknets.

Regarding DHS and CBP, both are overblown concerns. You'll receive a letter in the mail noting they've confiscated the material in question, which you usually send to the seller who will replace the shipment at no charge to you.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#37

Post by oconnor663 »

pasbesoin wrote: post #9

There are people who are evil. I don't care what economic language in which they couch it. They deserve what they get -- and I hope it is coming to them, soon. (This is not a threat, just a strongly held sentiment.) P.S. I hope that micro-laboratories and production diversification will soon put a final "paid" to such exploitative strategies and tactics. Yeah, the "risk" of a chemistry and biologics lab in every back…

I think if we depend on people to Be Good when there are big financial incentives not to, we're already screwed. We have to look at why the incentives are bad.

> With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

This should've been the second paragraph of the article, not buried near the bottom. The author seems to be expecting a system to make legal monopolies behave nicely. Instead we should stop creating legal monopolies.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#38

Post by angersock »

pasbesoin wrote: post #9

There are people who are evil. I don't care what economic language in which they couch it. They deserve what they get -- and I hope it is coming to them, soon. (This is not a threat, just a strongly held sentiment.) P.S. I hope that micro-laboratories and production diversification will soon put a final "paid" to such exploitative strategies and tactics. Yeah, the "risk" of a chemistry and biologics lab in every back…

Well, these people are playing by the rules--the rules of the free market as rigged with regulation.

If we as a society had said "You know, it's more important that we have a secure, available supply of this drug than to be friendly to corporate interests" and had acted accordingly, this would've gone a bit differently.

As it is, the "legacy support" for pharmaceuticals is probably not going to be that large as new and improved things come out.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#39

Post by oconnor663 »

cjlars wrote: post #21
jonknee wrote: post #3

My first thought was generics since it's so old, but this is simply amazing: > With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing. > The switch from drugstores t…

>“This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world” What Turing is doing is exploiting the natural monopoly that has formed for this drug. I was able to find only two global producers of this drug after a quick search (Turing and a generic Alibaba listing), which if true means Turing is the only game in town for a lot of supply channels. In addition, the medical market is relatively unable to ad…

This monopoly doesn't sound very natural.

Re: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests

#40

Post by adwf »

ikeboy wrote: post #18
gdrulia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying makes perfect sense on paper, but unfortunately reality is as always slightly more complex. Such simple thinking is full of the holes for exploitation and there will always be someone who will exploit them. Medicine is especially sensitive, because medicine can be priceless in value for the human who needs it, but that same human might not be able to pay that much. You can introduce government help…

The question is how we can fix this systematically without making bigger problems. Should a government agency set prices? What if the company stops making the drug, then? The price is high because no other companies are willing to make it for lower, after all. Note that the drug in question is not under patent. I don't think you'd advocate for literally forcing the company to make it and sell it for a specific price.…

Government setting prices works for the NHS in the UK. If a drug is too expensive it just doesn't get authorised as a treatment and we go with something else. The collective bargaining power of the nationalised system effectively forces the pharmaceutical companies to the table everytime. They'd rather sell for some profit than no profit.

It's only because the pharma companies can deal with consumers in the US on an individual basis that you guys get screwed over so much on your pricing.

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